


The Light in the Dark

by anr



Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-18
Updated: 2007-05-18
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:17:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anr/pseuds/anr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She can manage this too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> "Spark" (Tori Amos).

_doubting if there's a woman in there somewhere_

  


* * *

  


She reduces her life to symbols and code. Little stars and circles and check marks on the calendar in her mind (she'll be damned if she'll give him a paper trail). She charts each month into weeks, the weeks into days, and knows she's obsessed, at least technically, but rationalises it as being smart, careful, organised. If she can manage a hospital, she can manage this too.

  


* * *

  


House figures it out.

She's not surprised. His talent for deduction is just one of the reasons why she hired him.

  


* * *

  


His fingers on her flesh, her hip. Skirt raised too high, the alcohol cool. The needle stings in a good way. She'd worry about her desires having outweighed her sense of professionalism, but for once he's not staring at her cleavage and somehow that rebalances everything.

She's perfecting _her_ talent for justification. It helps.

  


* * *

  


"Pregnant!" he says, like he can goad her into an admission, like it's an accusation.

It is, just not in the way he thinks.

  


* * *

  


Days bleed into weeks into months.

She erases her calendar, and reschedules her weekly meetings with the head of Obstetrics.

  


* * *

  


House figures that out too.

(She thinks she was damned from the start.)

  


* * *

  


She walks past his office and finds it empty, dark. The whiteboard is clean, but there are open textbooks and publications are spread across the surface of the table still, and she walks inside to have a closer look, to see if she can't trace the path his team followed when they saved a boy's life today.

She can't. She gets lost somewhere between sarcoidosis and Wegener's granulomatosis, but doesn't let that bother her. She thinks maybe she can map it instead, and finds his black marker, but when she touches the pen to the board, it's not the patient's symptoms that come to mind.

Carefully, she writes _infertile_ at the top of the board in capital letters and underlines it once.

Her hand is shaking and she pretends not to notice.

Clenching her fingers tight around the marker, she writes anovulation underneath it. Then Asherman's syndrome and cervical stenosis. Then every other infertility cause she can think of, no matter how improbable, until the board is full.

Taking a step back, she stares at what she's written. Feels a little sick, a little relieved, a little --

"You're not very good at this, are you?"

Her spine straightens, shoulders locking. The marker drops back down onto the tray. "House."

"Cuddy," he mimics her tone but not her stance. She listens to him move across the room; watches from the corner of her eye as he stands beside her and studies the board.

When he reaches out towards the tray, she flinches. "Don't!" She is not really a patient, and she doesn't really want to know, not really.

He ignores her and keeps reaching, surprising her by picking up the eraser instead. She watches him clean the board in three quick swipes.

"You will be a mother," he says, replacing the eraser, and it's a tone she's never heard from him until now. Before she can analyse it, his words sink in.

"You --" She turns to face him; feels a little unsteady as she does so, like she did when the hormones flooded her after each of his injections. "You can't _know_ that." Can't _promise_ that.

He shrugs and turns away from the board. Meets her eyes. "If you didn't want my diagnosis, you wouldn't have come looking for it." He taps the head of his cane against her nearest wrist, just once, and starts to walk away. "I'll send you my bill in the morning," he says at the door, the words tossed over his shoulder, "two hours off clinic duty ought to cover it," and then he's gone.

She stares after him and waits. Waits for him to walk back in and deliver his punchline du jour. Waits one minute. Two minutes. Five. Ten.

When it doesn't come, she smiles.

  


* * *

  


She buys a calendar.

  


* * *

The End

**Author's Note:**

> ORIGINAL URL: <http://anr.livejournal.com/277544.html>


End file.
